* * * * * With a blow of my gun-butt I smashed through the glassite pane; tore the fabric-shade aside. This room was dark. I had an instant's glimpse of the dark blob of his crouching figure. There was the whiz of something he threw at me; the tinkling of glass as some fragile little thing struck against my forehead. I recall that my paralyzer ray darted into the dark room. Perhaps it caught him, held him for a second. But my head was reeling; my senses swiftly fading, with a cold sweat breaking out all over me. And then I was aware that I had fallen to the deck with my gun clattering away. With my last dim thought came the realization that I was fainting. That tiny glass globe which had broken against my forehead--I knew what it was! A little bomb of acetycholine, a weird drug to lower the blood-pressure and cause me to faint. I fought, but it was useless. My senses faded. Then after an interval I seemed vaguely to be conscious that someone was bending over me. A dark cloak.... Again I knew only blankness; and then slowly my senses were coming back. Weak, dizzy, with my head roaring, my body bathed in cold sweat, I found myself still lying on the dark deck. Perhaps I had been out only a moment or two. I could still hear the commotion up forward. I staggered to my feet; saw the cloaked figure as it ran into the superstructure. Carson making his getaway! I had a glimpse of him again, two levels down on the dim catwalk, and saw him dart into the pressure-chamber. I was too late getting there. The metal pressure-door closed in my face. But I had him! I could do to him what he had done to Brenda! I started for the manual controls. I could open that outer slide, let the pressure-room air out with a rush before he could get into his space suit, blast him out into space, or suffocate him in the pressure-room. But I had over-taxed my strength. My blood-pressure was still too low from that accursed drug. My senses were fading again and I sank to the floor. Weakly I tried to call Kellogg. But he wasn't in his little nearby cubby now. I did not quite lose consciousness this time. I heard the air slowly going out through the outside opening slide. Then heard the click as the automatic mechanism closed it. The corridor slide in another moment, automatically was slowly opening. The rush of air into the little room helped revive me. I got to my feet again; ran into the room. I could see the empty space on the rack where he had taken one of the powered pressure suits and escaped. At the bull's-eye observation porte I had a glimpse of him--a bloated figure in his air-filled suit--a tiny comet with a radiance of rocket-stream like a tail behind it. The blob of him in a moment had vanished. Where did he expect to go? Diagonally ahead, and far down in the glittering starfield, the round, putty-colored disk of Asteroid-9 was visible.